The Great Commission

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Redbaron said:
Is there another way of hearing this Commission that leads to love, justice, hope, peace and joy, rather than forcing our beliefs and traditions on others?
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Maybe it means to go out to all nations, seeking the disenfranchised of each. To preach good news to the LGBTQ of Uganda, to those without health insurance in the U.S., to those starving in Sudan, to those whose lives are interrupted by the war in Ukraine. Not to supersede any existing religion, but for those disenfranchised from the social norms, to preach relief, and real monetary support. There's a ton of individual Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Indigenous communities that already practice love, justice, hope, peace and joy.

But I think that Christ had a specific ministry to those who don't fit in. Which makes the Spirit, to me, universal. She beckons all of us, and she doesn't care which god we think we're following and/or worshipping.
 
Those running roughshod about freedoms of religion and feel no one else has the point ... that being to downfall of the freedom of belief and thus unbelievable expectations ... if you can keep the folk stupid! It happens ... and being kept barefoot has its character ...
 
Were any of the disciples baptised?

The followers of Jesus called themselves Followers of the Way. Would the Jesus of the Gospels have taught a Way to live or that he was the Son of God with all that entails?

I like the Great Commission in principle but not in how it has been interpreted. However, I believe it is more likely that Matthew inserted a large part of it or all of it into the story. The call to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit deem to me to not fit what Jesus was doing and saying prior to the crucifixion. I wonder what it could have meant to most of the people who were present.
 
jimkenney12 said:
Were any of the disciples baptised?

The followers of Jesus called themselves Followers of the Way. Would the Jesus of the Gospels have taught a Way to live or that he was the Son of God with all that entails?

I like the Great Commission in principle but not in how it has been interpreted. However, I believe it is more likely that Matthew inserted a large part of it or all of it into the story. The call to baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit deem to me to not fit what Jesus was doing and saying prior to the crucifixion. I wonder what it could have meant to most of the people who were present.
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Maybe they didn't need to be as archetype in the mythology! Like that Holy Lady cut up and distributed about the land ... mire detailing in the essence? Beta Oz 'ns ... edited to bozos ... confused items? If leaders encourage the great unknowing ... does the process extract something for its own ends?

Thus vast etudes on ends and means without medium ... encompassing "all" as moral and e thic investigations where the psyche is clouded by occurrences in the garden DH Lawrence! After all that ... sentient slip ... gift of eons, Timaeus, or time as due ... it cometh!

Do great powers respect time as they golf away their quota ... addressing holes? Damn! Deep dark mysteries continue as they'd rather not know the consequences ...

There's this cartoon about Adam and Eve puzzling about the appearance of little folk in the shrubbery ... snow white minds ... whitewashed by the leading event ...

Some wise person stated that sex are complicated when the parts are divined and separated by abyss ... habitual naivete in some terms ... life happens?

Some texts even state in the opening that you shouldn't be sentient ... legitimately some parties take this to extremes ... and deny aborted psyches! They start with the body of the item ... understandable?

No! Tis disallowed ... naivete is presumed as good to the end ... then anon (it comes to yah). Like Miranda a dirty consequence ... fertility in the soil NG!

So much dirt to go through in the sacred tomes ... when you cannot understand the wee black marks ...

Then many of the texts on the roughshod parts are covered up ... the old mother in the closet function ... 'ub*ert? Answer and you're out ... abstract fun eh! Abstract is said to be incomplete, or incarnate ... wait for the turn around!

The field is vast ... incomprehensible that it can be folded into a head ... so a large part is lost there ... rabbit holes? Ridiculous? Look at it from all angles ... it might resemble humanity ... all shot thro' ... with unseen corruption ... until removed ... an OBI cite?
 
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jimkenney12 said:
Were any of the disciples baptised?
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Interesting point. I don't think so or at least Jesus must have done it "off screen". Aside from Jesus' being baptized by John, I can't think of any baptism stories involving Jesus himself as the baptizer.
 
Mystic said:
In the NT church baptism is the normal vehicle that precedes the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit.
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Interesting to note, that at the 'Gentile Pentecost' at the home of a Roman named Cornelius, the Spirit was poired out, and THEN Peter called for water to baptize. (Acts 10:44-48)
 
Imagine immersion in the NT so as to avoid OT!

Oversight or overtime due to inadequate planning ... given incomplete conspiracies ... false schemes? Incarnate defines it ...

Yet OT outlines brute initiation ... Neanderthal? Archetype ...
 
Are mortals incomprehensive due to their fastidious attention to motive characters ... or emotional movements which tend to irrational outcomes that may extend their behaviours into the unknown regions ... thus unknown's expand! Lumped together ... a dark spot that may approximate ah oli point ...

Very difficult to see from some places ... thus obscure placations (thus covered up and hidden). Tense times may expose it as Chloe's ... end of terms?

There is a mortal drive to ignore these times ... excuses mores! Mores said to be essential in a community as tradition ignorance of that beyond a closed community; sound familiar? Thus more said to beyond ... and we speak to the shadow! --- Plato? Vague feints ... excellent in myth generation to a' Mu Zae gods ...

That's the word as frail connector ... so easily corrupted ... usually by mortal as what is perfect is beyond us ... sophisticated activities? Pure chaos ...
 
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Redbaron said:
Interesting to note, that at the 'Gentile Pentecost' at the home of a Roman named Cornelius, the Spirit was poired out, and THEN Peter called for water to baptize. (Acts 10:44-48)
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Yes, but that is the exception that proves the rule--the close association of baptism with bestowal of the Holy Spirit. In fact, Peter views repentance and baptism together as the means of receiving divine forgiveness: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38)."

The apostles were already performing baptisms during Jesus' public ministry (John 4:1-2).
 
Redbaron said:
But exceptions actually DISprove the rule. If they proved the rule, they wouldn’t be exceptions, now, would they?
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I had arguments with academic authority teaching about book-like rules ... where in the street sense I knew there were a spectre of variations leading me to leave the course as I wasn't learning much from those that were deficient in certain aspects. The academia's couldn't accept the the deficient portions ... but admittingly there was a void! It was authoritatively denied ... quantum states prevail ...
 
Redbaron said:
But exceptions actually DISprove the rule. If they proved the rule, they wouldn’t be exceptions, now, would they?
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You apparently don't understand "the rule"--the consistently close association between baptism and the expectation of receiving the Spirit. That pattern remains secure in NT pneumatology, despite the unusual Cornelius case, which, after all, is Peter's first and reluctant experience with Gentile mission.
 
Waterfall said:
So does baptism by the holy spirit come by fire or water?
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At Pentecost Spirit baptism was witnessed by a vision of tongues of fire hovering over the tongues speakers. But that was a unique experience.
When I was Spirit-baptized at age 16, a few people just sat and stared at me in a darkening amphtheater near a Manitoba lake. Their staring made me feel self-conscious, but when I asked one spectator, Doris, why she was staring, she replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!" So I suppose "fire" might be an image for such a glow. But Spirit baptism need not be so dramatic.

Paul teaches that Spirit baptism is the experience of being initiated into the church as the corporate body of Christ:
"For by one Spirit we were baptized into one Body... and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1)."

Drinking in the Spirit refers to the mystical experience of receiving the Spirit, which in the early days often meant speaking in tongues (so the pattern in Acts), but need not be restricted to that or any other specific spiritual gifts. The metaphor of drinking in the Spirit picks of Jesus' image of the Spirit as "living water," an expression which refers to flowing water in Hebrew usage. So drinking in the Spirit refers to a divinely inspired flow of thoughts, synchronistic events--any experience of a sense of guided flow in one's life.
 
Mystic said:
At Pentecost Spirit baptism was witnessed by a vision of tongues of fire hovering over the tongues speakers. But that was a unique experience.
When I was Spirit-baptized at age 16, a few people just sat and stared at me in a darkening amphtheater near a Manitoba lake. Their staring made me feel self-conscious, but when I asked one spectator, Doris, why she was staring, she replied, "Don't you know? Your face is glowing in the dark!" So I suppose "fire" might be an image for such a glow. But Spirit baptism need not be so dramatic.

Paul teaches that Spirit baptism is the experience of being initiated into the church as the corporate body of Christ:
"For by one Spirit we were baptized into one Body... and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:1)."

Drinking in the Spirit refers to the mystical experience of receiving the Spirit, which in the early days often meant speaking in tongues (so the pattern in Acts), but need not be restricted to that or any other specific spiritual gifts. The metaphor of drinking in the Spirit picks of Jesus' image of the Spirit as "living water," an expression which refers to flowing water in Hebrew usage. So drinking in the Spirit refers to a divinely inspired flow of thoughts, synchronistic events--any experience of a sense of guided flow in one's life.
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Yet we see in the old testament that the holy spirit comes by flame or fire and only to a select few. Was it changed in the new testament?
 
Were the disciples baptized? It seems there was a significant gao between any baptism they might have had and the reception of the Spirit. Why would God only provide the experience of the Spirit to people through baptism?

As much as I like the Great Commission, this discussion provides more weight in my view to the possibility the author of Matthew added this story to legitimize the practice of baptism.
 
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